Sun jumps into the low end

Sun Microsystems is branching out into the low end of the commercial market after it launched a family of high-performance workstations at significantly reduced prices.

The move comes in the wake of last month's deal with Intel, which will allow Sun's Solaris operating system to run on Intel's next generation Merced chip.

The announcement was seen as a consolidation of Sun's efforts to develop a real challenge to the increasing dominance of Windows NT in lower end commercial markets.

The workstations will be targeted at businesses in areas such as animation, software development and industrial process control.

Simon Tindall, Sun workstations marketing manager, said the strength of the workstations lies in UPA, a feature which enables applications that require a large number of calculations, such as advanced graphics programs, to run quickly and without the kinds of bottlenecks that tend to appear on Wintel systems.

He said: 'The only real advantage that Wintel has had over our products in the past has been its relatively low price. Sun is trying to match these prices, while providing machines of the highest possible specification.'

One source, which asked to remain anonymous, said: 'Sun is obsessed with taking on the PC. It is convinced that if it can match PC vendors in terms of price it can crack the market. What the company does not understand is that people who buy computers are far more interested in compatibility. Sun wants the industry standard.'

The source added: 'And, of course, resellers rely on sales margins for their profits - so they are not going to get excited about Sun pushing these cheaper products. Effectively, it means they have to sell more units.'

Simon Welsh, marketing manager at Sun master reseller Tplc, was quick to counter these claims: 'This is very good news for us because we will be moving into a volume market.

'At the moment, everybody's prices are dropping, and as market leader we are leading this trend from the front.'